Bert Stratton

Bert writes the blog www.klezmerguy.com.

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Dec. 2, 2020

Lakewood, Ohio An enormous oak fell onto one of the apartment buildings I own. There was no water damage or burst pipes at the building. That was the beautiful part. Also, nobody was hurt. Eighteen windows were knocked out, plus there was extensive…

Nov. 18, 2020

cleveland

Leaf blowers at 50 feet and other painful sounds of the season: Bert Stratton

CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio -- Mark Zuckerberg wants half of Facebook employees to eventually work from home. Here’s the thing about working from home: It can drive you slightly batty. You start thinking about noise, particularly when the leaf blowers…

Sep. 27, 2020

WSJ

Landlords Have Bills Too

Lakewood, Ohio I collect rents. I used to hang out occasionally with fellow landlords at the Theatrical Grill, a gangster-infused restaurant in downtown Cleveland. We talked about interest rates, garbage haulers and tenants from hell. We heard jazz…

Sep. 18, 2020

City Journal

Playin’ in the Rain

I’m a musician who deals with rainouts, almost like a baseball player. When it’s raining, I’m out of a gig. Because of Covid, my last indoor gig was five months ago. I’ve still got a few outdoor gigs lined up for this month. Then what? My band, Funk…

Jul. 1, 2020

cleveland

’Peaceful enjoyment of the premises’ while renting apartments in pandemic times: Bert Stratton

CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio -- The heavy-metal bass player in Apartment 10 complained. He sent me a voice memo featuring a neighbor screaming at 2 a.m. The bassist said, “I play 170 gigs a year. When I come off the road, I want to rest.” He was off the…

May. 24, 2020

cleveland

With death on our minds, something more to ponder - our final resting places: Bert Stratton

CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio -- Are you thinking about death more often because of the coronavirus pandemic? My rabbi must live at funerals. True, the synagogue has an associate rabbi, but still, I think the senior rabbi does the majority of the heavy…

May. 3, 2020

WSJ

The Rent Collector’s Dilemma

Lakewood, Ohio I’m a landlord with a manila folder marked “coronavirus late payers.” In April, 30% of my storefront tenants were late or delinquent. It could be worse, I suppose. Maybe May will be. The butcher was late. I knew he was good for the…

Dec. 23, 2019

City Journal

Latke Blues

I’ll probably be sick of potato pancakes by the fourth night of Chanukah. I’m in a klezmer band, Yiddishe Cup, and we do a fair number of synagogue parties, and the occasional Unitarian church gig. Everybody loves a crispy potato pancake (“latke” in…

Nov. 25, 2019

WSJ

I Should Never Have Gotten Involved With the MOB

Writer Martin Amis, the son of novelist Kingsley Amis, said it is somewhat disreputable to be in the same business as your father. “Being a hereditary novelist is a freaky thing, and people do find it a bit creepy,” Martin said. I’m a hereditary…

Jun. 14, 2019

City Journal

Beating My Dad

I should have listened more when my dad taught me tennis. Instead, I moped on the courts. My dad, Toby, was the only father out there. This was in the 1960s, in suburban Cleveland. My dad was often shirtless on the courts. A bare-chested guy—wearing…

Feb. 22, 2019

City Journal

He Rollated Along

A Carnival of Losses: Notes Nearing Ninety, by Donald Hall (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 224 pp., $25) Donald Hall wrote 34 books, mostly short, half of which were poetry. In his Essays After Eighty (2014), he wrote, “There are problems in writing one…

Feb. 1, 2019

City Journal

Wait Till Next Year

The Super Bowl? In Cleveland, we’re still all about the Browns, record 7-8-1. Baker Mayfield, the team’s backup quarterback and Number 1 overall pick in last year’s draft, got the call midseason and saved us. Shake and bake. The Browns are no longer…

Nov. 4, 2018

WSJ

Immigrants Are the Best Tenants

I own and rent out 25 mom-and-pop storefronts in Lakewood, Ohio, an inner-ring suburb of Cleveland. About 20% of my tenants are immigrants. I sell them the American dream—a chance to run their own business—and they sell beer, cigarettes, used…

Sep. 26, 2018

City Journal

A Landlord Tells His Story

Bert Stratton joins City Journal associate editor Seth Barron to talk about Stratton’s experience as a member of one of the most despised but important professions: landlord. Stratton is a musician and blogger, but he makes his living managing…

Aug. 28, 2018

City Journal

Locking My Bedroom Door

I had strangers sleeping in my house. My wife, Alice, had turned our extra bedroom into an Airbnb. The guests—I couldn’t keep track of them all—were an unknown quantity, so I locked my bedroom door every night. Alice liked putting scones and jelly…

Jul. 10, 2018

Belt Magazine

In observance of the first day of summer, an ode to my lawn mower

By Bert Stratton I didn’t used to like to cut my grass. I made my children do it, but then they grew up, moved away, and I got the job. Now I like the work. I like the meditative-ness of walking in ever smaller rectangles around my yard in…

Jun. 25, 2018

City Journal

The Freelancer

When poet Donald Hall, who died Saturday at age 89, was on Terry Gross’s Fresh Air radio show in 2012, he said that he wouldn’t complain about being old, then proceeded to do just that. He had just published a piece in The New Yorker, in which he…

Mar. 20, 2018

City Journal

Gettin’ My Snow Belt On

I fired my snowplow guy. He always showed up late and was a thief. He said he didn’t get my payment in the mail, so I gave him a second check. He cashed both checks. Did he think I wouldn’t look at my bank account? I yelled (to myself), “This guy is…

Feb. 28, 2018

Belt Magazine

28 minutes from Cleveland to Chicago? I’m on board with Hyperloop.

By Bert Stratton I’m on board. I’m good with the proposal from Hyperloop, a California company that announced on Monday it wants to get me from my home in Cleveland to Chicago in 28 minutes. If they can pull it off (right now it’s just a feasibility…

Feb. 23, 2018

WSJ

Need Emotional Support? That’s Ruff

‘Emotional support animals”—I’ve seen a few, and not just Dexter the peacock, bane of United Airlines. I’ve been dealing with ESAs since 2012. I’m a landlord in Cleveland with a no-dogs policy. I adopted the rule in 1977, when a tenant’s Doberman…